On January 2, 2020 I told Barry that after almost 23 years, I couldn’t do it (our marriage) any more. His response was “yeah, we’ve been drifting apart the past couple of years”. In reality, it was more like 8 or 9 years. It was slow, but it was there. Things weren’t really working well. We had opened our marriage up somewhat and we both ended up with feelings for other people. Those relationships didn’t end our marriage but they didn’t help. I realized early in 2019 that I didn’t want to be married anymore … to anyone. Then it took me almost a year to finally come to terms with things myself and then to tell him.
It was a really amicable separation and divorce and he’s moved on and getting married again. I’m really happy for him. Me? That’s a little more complicated. One of the benefits of the man I was involved with was we were both married and neither of us had any interest in leaving our spouses. Until I did. That’s when things got complicated. We finally ended the really emotional (for me anyway) part of our relationship. Sometimes I’m happy about it; other times I feel like my heart has been ripped out.
I’m slowly opening myself up to the possibility that perhaps one day I might have a relationship with someone but I’m in no hurry whatsoever. In the meantime I’m just having fun and living my life on my terms.
Not only did I leave my marriage, my home for the better part of 44 years, my community and my peeps, I moved about 90 minutes away from the vast majority of my support system. During the first lockdown. I moved into a wonderful apartment with Dante and Widget and decorated it according to my taste and bought myself a whole new wardrobe.
Things have been good but I’ve been struggling with my weight (despite being a nutritionist) and every time I got going, there was another lockdown. I make the most progress with weigh training along with already pretty clean diet. It’s been so frustrating but I’m taking steps to change this once and for all. I refuse to let this or anything else stop me.
I’ve been exploring my spiritual journey and although there have been days I didn’t want to get (or stay) out of bed, I keep putting one foot in front of the other.
But despite it all, I never stop moving .. mostly forward … with some steps backward. But I refuse to give up. I know I was put on this earth for something important … to make a difference in other people’s lives.
I chose to share this picture from an outdoor boudoir shoot last summer … because to me it symbolizes freedom and triumph … because despite the challenges, that’s how I feel.
There’s a lot of changes coming over the next few months … I hope you’ll be here to celebrate with me.
Thank you for never giving up on me, even when at times I have wanted to give up on myself. So much of how we perceive and live our lives is about attitude. What we focus on is where our energy goes and if we’re focussed on what’s going wrong, we get stuck.
Soooo …. I decided to change my attitude and focus on those things that I can have an influence on and let go of what I can’t.